VHeadline's Washington DC-based commentarist Chris Herz writes: Barack Obama is now engaged in the practical work of forming a new government. He has already picked, apparently, several important figures from his Democratic Party for the cabinet. He seems to wish for Hillary Clinton presently serving as a senator from the state of New York, to be Secretary of State (Foreign Minister). Tom Daschle a former senator from South Dakota is to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. Then today we learn that Eric Holder, a former official in the Justice Department under the Clinton administration is to become Attorney General (Minister of Justice).
Under the US system, cabinet officers are NOT what they are in the British or other parliamentary systems. Here they must give up other offices, as in Congress, or in the several states. They forfeit their own political bases to serve at the pleasure of the president. But they do receive in return a chance to have a real effect on the permanent bureaucracy of their various departments, as well as of course the ear of their boss.
Clinton is notorious for her willingness even as she held no official position in her husband's administration to promote US participation in the dismemberment of the former Yugoslavia, so as to remove the last socialist regime in Europe. Granted, that Sloban Milosevic made all this easy for her and for his country's other enemies, Italy, Austria and Germany (reprise to World War I). But her bellicose politics are not limited to this incident.
She voted for war on Iraq and she has stoutly voted for each and every appropriation of funds for this war, the swollen budget of the Pentagon, and wholly supports Obama's interest in expanding the Afghan War into Pakistan and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. She has never faltered from a fulsome support for the nasty lies put about by the Bush regime about Venezuela or the other reformist-minded governments in South America. She will be totally sycophantic in support of Obama's desire to recognize total Israeli dominion over Jerusalem and the other conquered territories in Palestine. She and her new boss are also shameless in their abuse of Russia over the Georgia business.
Tom Daschle is a more complicated figure. He was minority leader in the Senate at the time of the 9/11 attack on New York and on the Pentagon. His wavering and equivocal support for the most extreme of President Bush's attempts to use the crisis to build new presidential powers to torture, to imprison, to spy on not only foreign persons and powers but also on US citizens in the homeland led to him first being attacked with anthrax from within the US war establishment, and then to a total commitment of millions of dollars and thousands of fascist activists to achieve the successful defeat of his efforts for a new term in the US Senate in the election of 2004.
Frankly, usually I feel able to give confident and usually accurate predictions of what our public officials here will do based upon their records. But Daschle is a tough call. Like President Lyndon Johnson he has acquired the hard way a dislike for some of the more reactionary elements in our ruling circles. I suspect he, like many others, is going to advise the new president that the USA is sixty years behind in creating a National Health Service, first called for by President Truman in 1948. But this guy is a what we call a good soldier. If authority says no, he will not resign, but will do his best to execute the policy of his boss.
Eric Holder is another good trooper. He has made comments on the public record criticizing the Bush regime's use of torture and of non-judicial imprisonment at Guantanamo. But how much of this is simply playing to partisanship and how much is sincere is anyone's guess. He is a partner in the famous Covington Burling law firm in Washington which has always made its way by renting the best and brightest to whoever holds power. My guess is that if President Obama decides he needs all the power of the unitary presidency designed by George W. Bush, Mr Holder will do his best to secure those powers to his boss.
Meanwhile, all persons outside of our borders should be aware the current economic crisis has caused the US economy to contract by way over one-third in just a few months. Even Bloomberg Financial News is now saying that we are seeing deflation, a fancy word for depression.
We here in the North American republic have a nasty habit at times like this: We try to seize the resources of others beyond our borders to compensate for our own domestic problems. Keep your powder dry.
From the imperial capital
Chris Herz
cdherz44@yahoo.com
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Venezuela is facing the most difficult period of its history with honest
reporters crippled by sectarianism on top of rampant corruption within the
administration and beyond, aided and abetted by criminal forces in the US and
Spanish governments which cannot accept the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people
to decide over their own future.
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